“Dad, if life is beautiful, does that mean death is ugly?” My little brother, Danny asked. His eyes brimmed with tears.

“Why no, son, for death is a part of life, and therefore just as beautiful,” stated my father.

“Of course death isn’t beautiful, Danny,” I contradicted.

“Why isn’t it?”

“It just doesn’t work that way!”
“I like Dad’s answer better than yours”
“Oh, and why is that?”
“Because he knows the truth.”
“Danny, you don’t know what it’s really like.”
“You don’t either.”
I stopped talking. I didn’t want to tell him. Death has no limits. Death will track anyone, anywhere. Death will find you because he is never-ending. Dad was dying. And Danny had no idea.

It’s been a year since he died. I feel like a twisted, shrivelled apple core, stripped of all I used to hold close to my heart. I live with my mother and my brother, Danny. I remember my father as clear as I can read without glasses. It’s blurry. Only a year has passed by and I am already forgetting the sound of his voice. I feel light headed, immersed in a whirlwind of pain. I have the urge to scream, to run away from all that is painful. I find myself feeling blind with the sight of my father’s sickness and with the bitter sting of tears that stain my face every night before I enter another disturbed sleep.

My dreams are haunted. I am tormented with images of hospitals and prescription bottles lying about the bathroom. I cannot bear the weight of the sorrow. I am selfish. I only think of myself, says my mother. So I say to my mother:
“Do you know what I am? I am a mess of a girl who lost her father.
“Do you know what I want? I want my father back.
“Do you want to know something? He’s never coming back.”
My mother will cry when I say these things, but I don’t care. I am a selfish girl, after all.

Even though I’ve said hateful things, I try with all my might to never direct my anger towards Danny. He’s only six-years-old, and although he still doesn’t know how to read, he understands complex issues that most six-year-old boys do not. He asks the deepest questions, and doesn’t have many friends because he is so thoughtful and rarely likes talking to those who, in the words of Danny, “have too many toy trucks”. Of course we all know that Danny hates toy trucks mostly because Danny and Dad would spend the entire weekend playing with at least thirty toy trucks. Dad was a teacher and never had to work on the weekends. Many times, Dad and Danny would sneak into my room, when I was immersed in a book or watching a movie with headphones, and try to scare the crap out of me just to get me to play with them.

On some of the rare occasions that my Dad was busy fixing something in the house, not playing trucks with Danny, I would finally give in and go outside and steer the trucks around the lawn. Even in the winter Dad and Danny would bring the trucks outside and play on weekends.

A few weeks after my father’s death, Mom was called by Danny’s principal because he had a fit and tried to throw some kid’s toy trucks in the garbage can, all the while threatening to light the entire trash can on fire if any toy trucks were seen again. My mom tried to convince the principal that Danny didn’t need to see the school counselor and that everything was “O.K”. But the mean old lady didn’t buy it. Off Danny went to counseling for the next month. After that month, Danny seemed to calm down. The principal thought it was the counseling, but I knew that Danny just wanted to get out of it. Being the smart kid that he is, he knew that in order to stop the grief counseling, he had to pretend to be happy. Him and me, we aren’t so different.

High school sucks. I can tell you that much. Every day I put a smile on my face so my friends won’t rat me out and tell the teachers that I have anger issues, depression, and plain old boredom. I used to have a blast walking down the halls with my friends, complaining about this assignment or that assignment. Nothing ever had any weight to it. I was free as a bird, a bird living in the wild. I still love my friends and don’t get me wrong, I still love to laugh and smile, but life is different. My stupid father died on us. And when people die, grief is felt, but I don’t think I deserve to feel the pain that I do.

Similar to Danny’s incident, I had one too. It was about a month after Dad died. During school, my friend decided to play music. I was sitting on the other side of the room, which wasn’t very big to begin with, but she blasted that music like it was her only goal in life to blast music as loud as she could. Unfortunately for me it was a song that reminded me of my father and I just screamed. I literally sat there and held my ears, closed my eyes and screamed at the top of my lungs. Tormenting visions and thoughts appeared, disappeared and reappeared. Stop thinking, stop thinking! I couldn’t get the memories out of my head, as vivid as vivid can be. Dead, dead, dead. He’s dead.

Of course, after that little incident I had my own share of grief counseling. It sucked more than high school. My friends started treating me differently and my teachers did too. I wanted to curl up in a ball and die myself. But I didn’t. I decided to do two things to save my sorry ass. One, choke back the tears, and the screams. Two, drag my feet with my head held high. I suppose a song will trigger pain, but I can assure anyone who asks, the worst kind of pain is that which flows in silence.

Little things will occur and off I go into a silent rage. By silent, I mean absolutely silent. I don’t let anyone know. Why bother other souls with the wasted feelings for which people pity me? I don’t tell people because they don’t understand my pain. They only pity me. And so I never let them know. No more tears, no more weakness. People have begun to believe my pretending. They don’t look at me like I’m pathetic. They don’t ask the stupid question “How are you doing?” I still have arguments with my mother. She can tell that I’m not fine.

“Why are you so angry?”

“Mom, stop talking to me.”

“Cece, you have to talk to me at one point or another. Maybe you can do that today.”

“Mom, nothing is wrong. Why do you constantly insist that something’s wrong?”

“You just seem… I don’t know. Different.”
Mom doesn’t know that I will begin to sob every time I mention Dad. And I just can’t do that to her. I have to be strong for her. So I bite the bullet and seal my lips.

No matter what I do, I can’t stop the pain. I create dreams and a world where I am safe, a place where my crazy, distorted grief can slip away. But the walls of my own little world wear down quickly and the pain rushes in. I want to scream and howl at the world as it passes me by. I want to slap my friends and yell at them “Wait for me!” They are moving too fast when I am stuck in a world with pain and hate. But no one understands. Why would they when they are the essence of perfection in my mind? They cannot feel the grief, the pain, the sorrow. They can’t hear the sound of grief echo through the hallway. Perhaps they never will. As this grief radiates within my very being, I wonder if I will ever stop feeling it. I begin to panic as I swirl with pain. I have the urge to scream and run away from all that is painful.

Five years have passed and I still feel that old, and familiar sting of loss. It lives deep within my bones, but it is a weak pain. I have grown older and I know that I will live my life to its fullest, never forgetting my father but always putting him in the back of my mind. After years and years of feeling that struggle, that loss, sorrow and grief, I realized that I had everything I could ever want, even if he was dead. I had my mother, and Danny. They were there for me and would always be by my side if I needed them. Life is beautiful. And I can recall with great sadness and love the conversation my father and Danny spoke as he was dying.
“Dad, if life is beautiful, does that mean death is ugly?”

“Why no, son, for death is a part of life, and therefore just as beautiful,” stated my father.

I carry his voice in my head, or the little memory of the sound of his voice that I still have. I believe every word he said. It took some time to figure it out, but now I trust in his words. I felt like a twisted, shrivelled apple core, stripped of all I held close to my heart, just so I could find the beautiful meaning in death.